Golden Tate among Seahawks inactive players

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Rookie wide receiver Golden Tate, one of the bright spots of early training camp, was among the eight inactive players named by the Seahawks on Sunday for their season opener against the San Francisco 49ers.

Golden Tate

Coach Pete Carroll acknowledged there were going to be some tough decisions concerning who to include in the mandatory inactive list and that played out with the inclusion of Tate, the team’s second-round draft choice.

Veteran tackle Chester Pitts is also inactive, which means Tyler Polumbus starts at left tackle in the 1:15 p.m. game at Qwest Field.

Tate has fallen behind veterans Deion Branch, Mike Williams and Deon Butler in the receiving rotation and at this point has less value on special teams than Ben Obomanu, who was kept active as the fourth receiver.

The decision on Tate is interesting though, given the Seahawks are going with four wide receivers while keeping five active running backs in Justin Forsett, Leon Washington, Julius Jones, Quinton Ganther and Michael Robinson.

I outlined the difficulty of the inactive decisions in this post on Friday and raised the question over whether Tate might be one of the choices, given the number’s crunch at various positions.

Since the Seahawks have only two quarterbacks on their 53-man roster, they have no emergency third QB who can be listed among the eight inactives. Instead, Carroll has said Robinson — who played quarterback at Penn State — would be next in line if Matt Hasselbeck and Charlie Whitehurst get injured.